Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos has been banned by his own alma mater, the University of Manchester, from participating in a debate on campus about free speech.

Manchester’s student union also banned Yiannopoulos’s debate opponent, Julie Bindel, from discussing whether modern feminism has a problem with censorship. Yiannopoulos briefly attended Manchester as a Philosophy undergraduate before dropping out to take up a place at Cambridge.

Yiannopoulos is a leading hate figure for feminists. This weekend, organisers of the Los Angeles Slut Walk called the LAPD after they discovered he and Rebel Media broadcaster Lauren Southern were interviewing attendees. He regularly receives death threats from feminist activists, although he insists that such threats are not to be taken seriously.

Safe space policies, which are typically used as an excuse to ban politically unwelcome speakers, have attracted growing concern from across the political and academic establishment in recent months. In a recent Atlantic cover story, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and free speech campaigner Greg Lukianoff warned that safe spaces were stifling the intellectual and emotional development of college students.

Earlier in the year, leading British academics published an open letter in The Observercalling the no-platforming of politically unwelcome speakers “illiberal and undemocratic.”

The Manchester Student Union Safe Space policy claims it is “committed to providing an inclusive and supportive space for all students.” They also claim to “believe strongly in the right to free speech.” Breitbart has approached the student union for comment. A Change.org petition has also been started to reinstate Yiannopoulos and Bindel.